Mark Arends, Hara Yannas & More to Lead 1984 at Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company; Full Cast Announced

Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company present 1984 by George Orwell, created and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, from Friday 13 September to Saturday 28 September 2013 at Nottingham Playhouse. The production features text by Duncan Macmillan with designs by Chloe Lamford, lighting by Natasha Chivers, sound by Tom Gibbons and video designed by Tim Reid. Following the show's run at Nottingham Playhouse, the production will launch a subsequent UK Tour.

The full cast is Mark Arends (Winston), Tim Dutton (O'Brien), Stephen Fewell (Charrington), Christopher Patrick Nolan (Martin), Matthew Spencer (Syme),Gavin Spokes (Parsons), Mandi Symonds (Mrs Parsons), Hara Yannas (Julia).

1984 will embark on a 10-week UK tour, starting with Nottingham before travelling to Oxford, Salisbury, Warwick, Richmond, Liverpool, Cardiff and Leeds.

George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, is one of the most influential novels in recent history, with its chilling depiction of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance and incessant public mind control. Its ideas have become our ideas, and Orwell's fiction is often said to be our reality.

Filtering the spirit and the ambition of the novel through the lens of contemporary culture, this radical new staging explores surveillance culture, identity and how thinking you can fly might actually be the first step to flying.

Headlong continues to interrogate our most important cultural texts, following acclaimed stagings of Faustus, Six Characters in Search of An Author,King Lear and Medea with a bold re-imagining of the definitive dystopian novel.

Alongside this production of 1984, Headlong begins an exciting new partnership between Headlong and King's Cultural Institute, part of King's College London. Headlong will be one of three companies selected to join KCI's Knowledge Producers, and will be working closely with academic experts to develop a toolkit of digital technology that can be used to enhance and deepen the audience's experience of live performances and investigate whether digital technology can revolutionise the way in which we understand and share live theatre.

1984 is Headlong's second recent co-production with Nottingham Playhouse, where the 50th anniversary season continues with new plays by Michael Eaton and Amanda Whittington and a new production of Richard III starring Ian Bartholomew.

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